Why Take the SAT?

The SAT, as you have heard from college admissions, is one of the required standardized tests for US universities admissions. The SAT covers three different areas including critical reading, writing, and math.

Many students are preparing for the upcoming SAT test in October in various ways and some have gone as far as spending the entire school year solving practice SAT questions or spending their entire summer vacation in an SAT camp, training to receive top scores on the test.

So why are students spending so much time trying to receive a high score in SAT tests? An obvious answer to this question would be the rising competitiveness of universities. Students must prove themselves worthy to universities in order to outshine other competitors and one way to prove this is to achieve a high SAT score.

Roy S. trained at an SAT summer camp during his vacation. He states, “During SAT camp in the summer, I studied 10 hours per day continuously for a month because I wanted to get a good score in SAT in order to get to a good university.” Each day, Roy S. had to complete five hours of math practice and two hours of grammar. After completing those assignments, he had to complete a vocabulary quiz with more than 150 words. If he didn’t complete all the assignments given that day, he wasn’t allowed to leave, he added.

SAT scores are also thought to be an important factor that university admissions look at when choosing which students to enroll. According to research from Robert M, A chief data strategist of U.S. news shared his thoughts on the requirement of SAT in universities. He stated research has shown that more than 60 percent of universities put SAT as an ‘important factor‘ to university requirements.

Another junior student from AISG, who also studied and practiced SAT during summer, Andy Chou, shared his thoughts on how universities are requiring SAT.

Andy Chou said When he looked at five of the universities he wanted to sign up for, 4 of them had required SAT scores higher than 1300 and it wasn’t optional. In order to get into the universities he liked, he had to study 8 hours a day in a sat camp during summer vacation hammering all the SAT questions. It wasn’t a joyful experience but he had to put in effort in order to get in the universities.

Being a critical factor enrolling in a university and as the competitiveness of universities raises, more students are putting hard effort and focus on SAT. Good luck all SAT test-takers.